Solitary pulmonary nodules: detection, characterization, and guidance for further diagnostic workup and treatment.

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to improve radiologists' understanding of the clinical issues involved in making a diagnosis and to guide further diagnostic workup and treatment of solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs). Information on the morphologic and hemodynamic characteristics of SPNs provided by dynamic helical CT, with high specificity and reasonably high accuracy, can be used for initial assessment. PET/CT is more sensitive at detecting malignancy than dynamic helical CT, and all malignant nodules may be potentially diagnosed as malignant by both techniques. Therefore, PET/CT may be selectively performed to characterize SPNs that show indeterminate results at dynamic helical CT.